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Significant Look Around expansions for Tokyo (including Tokyo Islands), Chiba, Shizuoka, Kyoto and Osaka covering most if not all of the public roads in those prefectures are coming this spring (April~May 2023), along with capital city or select city and district additions for Aichi, Gunma, Okayama, Fukuoka and Kumamoto prefectures.

This will be the largest Look Around expansion for Japan since the August 2020 ‘Tokyo Olympics’ kickoff launch. Yet redesigned ‘New Maps’ with Apple proprietary cartography seen in America and recent European rollouts remain an elusive goal after five years of Apple Maps image collection. There has been some interesting discussion on Reddit and elsewhere about when redesigned Apple Maps are coming to Japan, but most people seem confused. Even Justin O’Beirne initially listed Japan as a 2023 new maps candidate but wisely removed it.

Many people assume entire prefectures have been mapped when this is not the case, easy to do if you don’t live here and think Japan is a small island country. Map views are deceptive: you can only appreciate how much bigger Japan is in real life when driving it.

Apple has a simple formula for image collection in Japan: Cities + Districts = Prefectures. That is to say Apple does not bother with stand alone mapping of other classifications (villages, towns, etc.), and has never mapped an entire prefecture in one concentrated sweep: they start with select large cities and districts then gradually add less populated cities and districts over several mapping seasons.

Yamanashi Prefecture was to be the first prefecture Apple would map in one season (February~November 2023). However, the entire Apple Maps Image Collection 2023 schedule for Japan was pulled just as it was due to start on February 1. Backpack image collection was re-added on March 22, currently there is no van image collection is scheduled for Japan in 2023, though this may change.

To explain the situation, I have come up with (what else?) a map that hopefully explains the complicated situation with easy to understand terms of what’s mapped and what’s not, because looking at it only from the prefectural level oversimplifies things to the point of confusion.

1. Mostly Mapped Prefectures
   ‘Mostly mapped’ because Apple only maps public roads (city, district, prefecture, national). In Japan there are lots of publicly used local community maintained roads classified as ‘private roads‘ that Apple does not map (nearly 40% of all roads in my city), that Google does. This means there are significant dead spots in areas ‘completely covered’ by Apple Maps image collection vans and backpacks and this has lots of implications not only for redesigned map cartography, Look Around, AR Walking Directions, etc., but overall quality and usefulness.
2. Partially Mapped Prefectures
   Major metropolis areas that include good sized parts of multiple neighboring prefectures: Greater Tokyo (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki), Greater Osaka (Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Shiga, Hyogo), Greater Nagoya (Aichi, Mie). For some reason Apple has not mapped traditional greater area regions like Gifu (Greater Nagoya) and Wakayama (Greater Osaka).
3. Selectively Mapped Prefectures
   Capital cites in select prefectures: Miyagi, Niigata, Ishikawa, Kagawa, Ehime, Okayama, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kumamoto.

In short Apple Maps Japan continues its gradual measured expansion which means no proprietary New Maps, Detailed City Experiences or 3D landmarks, etc., are coming in 2023, 2024 or even 2025. Those features cannot happen until Apple image collection vans map all of Japan, including private roads as Google does. I still think Indoor Station Maps with AR directions are in the works (WWDC23 maybe?) but for regular maps Japan is stuck with the mediocre GeoTechnologies cartography…and will be for some time to come. Apple Maps in Japan has been, and will remain, the all bets off outliner for redesigned maps and associated features.

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Related
When will Japan get Apple’s New Maps? Part 1, Part 2: the private road problem

Look Around #1 August 2020: Greater Tokyo, Greater Osaka, Greater Nagoya
Look Around #2 January 2021: Fukuoka City, Hiroshima City, Nara (Greater Osaka), Takamatsu City
Look Around #3 May 2021: Sendai City, Kanazawa City
Look Around #4 May 2022: Sapporo City, Niigata City, Shizuoka City, Akashi City

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2022 mapping season: the basis for Look Around #5 expansion in 2023

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The original Apple Maps image collection Japan schedule for 2023 posted in January then pulled. As of 2023-03-22, only backpack image collection has been reposted.

In 2018 Eddie Cue said, “We have been working on trying to create what we hope is going to be the best map app in the world, taking it to the next step. That is building all of our own map data from the ground up.” After 10 years of Apple Maps, 7 years of rebuilding it and 3 years after the all-new map launch…are we there yet?

As I said last year, reviewing Apple Maps is impossible because it’s a very different service in different regions, with Japan an outliner in many ways. All that follows is from a Japanese market perspective that does not apply to using Apple Maps in other places.

In the run up to WWDC22, the Apple Maps team rolled out new features:

• AR Walking Directions and Refine Location for Kanto, Nagoya and Kansai locations covered by Look Around.
• Look Around expansion covering Niigata, Shizuoka, Sapporo and Akashi city areas.

If there is one Apple Maps take away from WWDC22 it was the focus on Apple Maps services and leveraging Apple created, Apple proprietary Look Around and detailed 3D city experience in developer apps. For developers using MapKit there is a lot of new stuff to access all new map details. They have access to the entire Apple Maps stack and can incorporate Look Around and the detailed 3D city experience in their apps.

Apple also has a new web service called Apple Maps Server that allows 3rd party app backends to do georelated searches directly with the Apple Maps Server which promises to increase performance instead of wasting mobile bandwidth and battery. It seems like a small step but I’m intrigued if Apple has bigger Apple Maps Server plans later on. Also this:

Old is New
What’s on the slate for the iOS 16 Maps app? With the focus on services i.e. features Apple can add without a new app, not much. We have a refreshed Maps UI that adds multi-stop routing with much better start point~destination point selectors, and condenses various route and guidance options into a single slide-able menu selection row.

For some bewildering reason Apple touts transit cards and fares in Maps as new. They are not. The features have been there since the October 2016 iOS 10.1 Apple Pay Suica launch update, they also come with the same old limitations in iOS 16, like ignoring your transit cards installed on Apple Watch. And it won’t work with transit cards that don’t support Wallet recharge, like Ventra and HOP. Apple is either hard up for showcasing new Maps features or it counts as new because it is new for America.

In field tests there are some nice new little touches. Walking directions now include elevation information, Point of Interest (POI) cards are better arranged, Siri suggestions seems a little more with it (the new high quality Japanese voices are nice too).

I was hoping for some tweaks to transit directions with better transfer and final destination notifications but there is no apparent change from iOS 15, and transit directions remain hopelessly lost on subway routes. No changes either for Japanese cartography and Japan focused Guides remain English language only.

In sum it will be a quiet Apple Maps year for Japanese users. The iOS 16 UI tweaks are nice to have, Look Around will get the new extensions currently being mapped (minus private roads), maybe Real-Time Transit will get real. Definitely no new maps for Japan and the big indoor station mapping effort remains a mystery. Perhaps we’ll find out what Apple is up on that front at WWDC23, but that’s another story for another time.

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iOS 16 Apple Maps Gallery (b1)